Up since three. Guess that’s what I get for getting my ass in bed on time.

Watched Fifth Element. Gotta like Bruce Willis. Not that Milla Jovovich is hard on the eyes, either.

Chris Tucker may be the goofiest bastard ever.

The hotel has a japanese channel, and the sumo matches have kept me entertained for hours. As I have often explained to the wife, fat guys in thck silk waistbands sweating and stomping around is a magnificent, nearly tectonic experience. She has yet to agree. Except on the tectonic bit. Japanese TV is also incredibly amusing to watch, just to figure out what the hell they’re talking about. Currently, they’re showing video of chicken shit. And some Jackie Chan looking kid eating rice with a raw egg. And now a bunch of well dressed Japanese are sniffing chicken poop pellets. Oh, now I get it, it’s a documentary about caged vs. free range chicken. I think. If I spoke more than a dozen words of Japanese this would be incredibly mundane. Lots of foreign language stuff is like this.
Consider Schiller’s “To Joy” put to music by Ludwig Van:

Freude, schöner Götterfunken,
Tochter aus Elysium!
Wir betreten feuertrunken,
Himmlische, Dein Heiligtum.
Deine Zauber binden wieder,
Was die Mode streng geteilt,
Alle Menschen werden Brüder,
Wo Dein sanfter Flügel weilt.

You hear this sung, and it sounds magnificent, stately, almost magical. And then you get the translation:

Joy, beautiful spark of the gods
Daughter of Elysium
We enter fire-imbibed
Heavenly, thy sanctuary
Thy magic reunites those
whom stern custom has parted
All men will become brothers
Under thy gentle wing

Damn, it’s some touchy-feely bullshit. You fully expect it to be about hellfire and damnation, steaming bloody cacodemons rising up from the ground to visit painful death upon democrats, and before you know it, krauts in ruffled shirts are kissing each other. What a gyp.

While I’m on the subject, even in our OWN language there is SUCH crap- consider Norman Greenbaum’s “Spirit in the sky”

When I die and they lay me to rest
Gonna go to the place that’s the best
When they lay me down to die
Goin’ up to the spirit in the sky

That fuzzy guitar, that pounding bass, and it’s more touchy feely bullshit. let me show you what the lyrics should be, with that music:

I’m Gonna kill your mother-Your father too
then I’m coming back to waste you
You’re whole family’s gonna die
I’m gonna send ’em up to the spirit in the sky.

Norman Greenbaum was a pussy.